Translation 48. Bizarre Adaptation of Octavio Paz’s El Cántaro Roto

One of the best known poems of world famous Mexican poet and Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz is an epic of 1170 words, El Cántaro Roto (The Broken Pot). It is a complex and passionate evocation of Mexican history and landscape.

As this first third of the poem shows visibly and audibly, it is a brilliant and characteristic Paz creation.

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One of musical composer Eric Whitacre’s famous choral pieces is called Cloudburst. He cites Octavio Paz’s ‘El Cántaro Roto’, as the inspiration for his composition. However, his work contains only 109 words of the Paz poem, including the 39 words in bold type above, plus these wonderfully sonorous words from another poem by Paz (Agua nocturna):
ojos de agua de sombra,
ojos de agua de pozo,
ojos de agua de sueño